Kaddish
by princessxleah
Summary: Cristina seeks to give comfort to Owen during an emotional time in the best way she knows how.


Cristina knocked on the door to Owen's apartment again, waiting for him to let her in. Although most of their time was spent at her place, for the simple reason that it was closer in proximity to the hospital, when they had a day or two off of work she liked to go to his apartment. It was comfortable, he had a king-sized bed and it was always nice to not have to worry about Callie and the perky, obnoxious blonde that was always attached to her hip walking in on her and Owen.

And then there was the two-person Jacuzzi bathtub. That alone was worth the price of admission. Yes, Owen's apartment definitely had its perks.

She knocked for the third time, mildly annoyed and slightly concerned. Owen had left the hospital earlier that afternoon and had called her to ask what she wanted him to pick up for dinner, so she had assumed he would be home. She was tired and hungry, and a soak in the Jacuzzi with Owen and a glass of red wine was just what she needed. Just as she was about to break out her cell phone and call him, the door opened to reveal Owen holding the phone to his ear, telling the person on the other end to hold on for a moment.

"Sorry," he murmured, motioning for her to come in. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as she walked past him to enter, but Cristina couldn't help noticing that he seemed distracted, beyond the fact that he was on the phone. His eyes were a bit clouded and he seemed far away. He turned away from her to reach for a pen and pad lying on the kitchen counter and spoke into the phone.

"Could I get that address?" Owen asked, scribbling as he listened. Cristina watched briefly before walking to the table where he had obviously begun setting up dinner for them. The chicken parmesan dinners were still in the containers he had brought them home in along with two plates and two wineglasses. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but he was still on the phone. She walked over to the wine rack for a bottle of red and opened it, pouring it into the glasses, and was in the middle of putting their dinner on the clean plates when Owen wrapped up his call, getting her attention with his final words.

"Well, thank you for letting me know. Yes. Yes. Again, I'm so sorry. Okay. Goodbye." He pressed the button to end the call, pausing for a moment, just standing there with the phone in his hand. He seemed to have forgotten she was there until she walked over to him, lightly laying a hand on his arm and offering him a glass of wine.

"Thanks." His smile didn't reach his eyes as he took the glass from her, downing half the glass with a single gulp. "How was your day?"

Cristina raised an eyebrow. "Better than yours, I'm guessing." She looked up into his blue eyes, still frustratingly distant. "What happened?"

Owen sighed. His gaze shifted so that he was staring into her eyes, fully present now but full of weariness and sadness. "One of the men I served with at the beginning of the Iraq campaign was just killed in a roadside bombing."

The silence hung in the air after he spoke. Cristina wasn't good in this type of situation, never knew what to do or say, but she couldn't take the pain in his eyes and sought to take it away by wrapping her arms around him.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was quiet. She wasn't sure what else she could say to him. No matter how much time they spent together, no matter how much she tried to understand, she could never really grasp that part of his world, those years of his life that were devoted to the army and spent overseas. "Is there anything-"

"No. Thank you, but…" Owen sighed. "The funeral's tomorrow. I'll make an appearance; give my condolences to his family…" His arms tightened around her for a brief moment before releasing her. "Not much more I can do, you know?"

Cristina watched him finish off the rest of his glass of wine. He caught her eye and tried to smile at her. "You must be hungry. You should eat." He motioned towards their rapidly cooling dinner.

"You should too." Cristina tugged his arm so that he followed her to the table where their food waited, but he shook his head. "Don't give me that. Eat." She grabbed their plates and silverware and gestured towards the wine bottle and walked to the couch in the living room and sat down. Sometimes she thought that during the worst of his post-traumatic stress disorder that he more often than not forgot to eat and that was partly the reason he had looked so haggard those initial months he had returned from Iraq.

He followed her, holding the bottle of wine, but though he refilled his glass and topped hers off, he didn't touch his food or drink. His eyes were once again unfocused and distant, somewhere she couldn't reach him. She sighed, neatly draining her glass of wine and nibbling at her food half-heartedly and wishing she could do something for him.

…Well, maybe she could do something for him.

Cristina glanced at his melancholy profile and made the instinctive decision to go through with it, because even though it was stupid and maybe it wouldn't be enough…she wanted to do something for Owen. He had gone through the horrible loss of his unit alone, but, even in spite of the fact that she was probably the one person who was least equipped to help him deal with this, he didn't have to work out the demons alone and in his own mind this time, at least if she could help it.

"Come here." She set down her glass of wine and plate on the coffee table and took his own glass of wine from him and moved it next to hers. As she stood up she pulled his hand so that he followed her, and she walked them both to the bathroom.

"What…" Cristina ignored his confusion as she turned on the light in the darkened room and turned to him, running her hands through his hair and down his neck, her thumbs tenderly stroking the rough stubble on his jaw. She pressed her forehead to his and brushed his lips with hers before she was pulling him down with her, so they were both kneeling on the floor. "Cristina?"

"Lie down." Her voice was quiet but commanding, and she lay back onto the hard tiles, the coolness seeping through her thin shirt and to her skin. She looked up at Owen, his brow furrowing as he knelt above her. "It's not going to work if you don't come here and lie down."

She took heart at the slight smile at her insistence, as he lay next to her, both of them staring up at the ceiling. They were both quiet for a brief moment before Owen spoke again. "What won't work?"

"Shiva." It was strange; she never noticed how much it echoed in here. No wonder Owen's neighbors always gave her strange looks when she left his place.

"Shiva." When he said it, his tone made it sound far more an incomprehensible concept than it actually was. "The Jewish period of mourning?"

"Yep."

"And…" He was seemingly groping for the right words. "…Shiva traditionally takes place by lying on the bathroom floor?"

"Yep." Her answer was immediate and decisive.

"Ah." He was silent once more, and neither of them said anything more for awhile, until Owen once again spoke, his voice far away. "How is shiva supposed to help?"

Cristina looked over at him, lost in his own thoughts as he stared at the ceiling, and was reminded of lying on another bathroom floor a lifetime ago, and feeling as helpless then as she did now to try and be 'that' person, the one that had all the answers, that could provide some form of comfort. She wasn't sure she could say anything at the moment that wouldn't sound cheesy or cliché; that shiva helped one to "grieve" and "remember" and it was the time to "embrace what the future will bring" or whatever. Nothing seemed right, and yet now his fathomless eyes were focused on her, the pain evident on his face, seeking an answer.

"It's supposed to remind you that…that even though you lost someone, you still have people there for you to help you through it." She tentatively reached for his hand that was lying at his side.

Owen was silent for a long time after, but his hand clung to hers as if it was a lifeline, and his eyes never left hers, even though Cristina wasn't entirely sure whether or not what he was seeing when he looked at her.

"When we were…overseas, we didn't get to do…this." He gestured vaguely as he spoke.

"Lie on the bathroom floor?" Her voice was light, but she gave his hand a light squeeze as a sign of support.

He smiled faintly. "Well, that too. But…" The pause was infinitesimal, but she detected the swallow that had caused it and rubbed her thumb against his hand to encourage him to continue. "When…when there was a death…" Another pause, another swallow. "There wasn't time to think about it. We didn't get to…mourn. We'd remember them when we had a chance, and we would have small tributes, but…" He shook his head. "There wasn't a funeral or anything…We just…we went on."

"You did your job." Cristina said quietly.

"It's what you sign on for," agreed Owen. "I just…you didn't think about it. You didn't have time to feel." He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds and opened them once again, and for the first time Cristina felt that he was looking into her eyes and he was there, and not in a blood-soaked desert a world away. "Now there are funerals and wakes and…shiva…" His laugh was soft and ironic. "And I don't know how to deal with any of it. I don't know how to just…" He gestured again, at a loss for words.

Cristina didn't know what to say either, because she had been there. She didn't know how to get through or see the point in dwelling on the grieving process either, but she also knew this was how it had all started for Owen, keeping it all in and ignoring everything until between that and his post-traumatic stress disorder he had broken down in front of her eyes.

She rolled on her side to cup his face in her hand, and they lay there quietly before a memory stirred within Cristina, and she started, quietly at first, the rhythm coming back to her even if the words were hazy, and she recited the prayer to Owen. She didn't pray, and she honestly wasn't sure if he did either, but it seemed appropriate considering she had deemed this shiva, and if nothing else, the cadence was soothing for him and comfortingly familiar for her.

"…Aleinu v'al kol Yisrael v'im'ru, Amein." The last words she spoke in a whisper, unsure if the expression on his face was indicative that it had helped.

"What did that mean?" He rested his hand over hers, still resting on his cheek.

"It…" It had been so long and the specific words were escaping her now, but she realized it didn't matter, because she knew what the prayer ultimately was for. "It's a prayer for peace. For your friend." She paused. "For all of them."

There was a light in his eyes that had been missing since she had first walked into his apartment, and he squeezed her hand gently. "Thank you." He leaned in to brush her lips with his, a brief yet intense kiss, and she tried to put everything she couldn't say into it, and everything she felt. They broke apart only to continue lying there on the floor, Cristina snuggled into Owen's shoulder, his body far less tense than it had been before.

"So what do we do for shiva after we pray?" asked Owen, his words almost buried in her hair.

Cristina didn't even have to think about it. "We're Jews. We eat." Her voice was decidedly matter of fact as she curled up into Owen.

He chuckled, a genuine sound of mirth that echoed throughout the bathroom and brought a smile to her face. "I'm sorry. You must be hungry. We should go have dinner."

"Yeah," Cristina agreed. "We should."

They didn't move from where they lay, though, and Cristina was more than comfortable where she was. It wasn't his king-sized, soft mattress, and they were about a foot short of where they needed to be for the Jacuzzi, but it didn't matter, because she was with him, and for the moment, everything was peaceful.


End file.
